2006

20th Century 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Adrian Hayward, a staunch Liverpool fan living in Manchester, had a dream. He dreamt that Alonso would score a goal from inside his own half. He put his money where his mouth was and had £200 at odds of 125/1 for Alonso to complete the feat. Adrian netted a cool £25,000 for his troubles. Keep dreaming!

We celebrated our 18th birthday towards the end of February and thought it would be a little cheeky to ask for presents from our customers, instead we bombarded them with money back specials and bonus offers – happy birthday Paddy Power!

Cheltenham was a bonanza for patriotic punters with a record 10 Irish winners, but amazingly we came out of it unscathed and very much on top.

Onwards and upwards for the fasting growing bookie in the game, bingo is launched. Not only that but we also spread our wings geographically with the launch of both a German and Spanish website – ole!

2006 was also the year of little clothes. After issuing an April fool’s day press release announcing our sponsorship of the world’s biggest ever strip poker tournament, we were inundated with requests from potential players and decided why not!

So the Café Royal in August was to be the venue and the logistics machine went into overdrive. We had 200 players (120 male & 80 female), all parading around in their birthday suits until there was just one – Jon Young, the first ever Paddy Power World Strip Poker Champion. Not only was the tournament a great success, but we now sit proudly in the Guinness book of World Records for the biggest Strip Poker tournament ever.